


Sun

by agentcalliope, clearascountryair



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bus Kids - Freeform, Canon Compliant, F/M, Female Friendship, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, girls supporting girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 16:36:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9500345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentcalliope/pseuds/agentcalliope, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearascountryair/pseuds/clearascountryair
Summary: How can one get through the lonesomeness of a rainy day when there's no hope that the clouds will ever break?





	

She can hear the soft pattering of rain against the window, and then nothing at all.  No time and a lifetime later, somewhere deep in the back of her mind, an alarm goes off.  The pair of arms ( _the right pair, the right pair_ ) untangle themselves from around her and turn it off.  The shower joins the rain and she is alone.

She opens her eyes to darkness.

She blinks and still darkness.

Again and again, darkness. 

The shower turns off and the curtains open.

(No light comes in--still darkness) 

Deep within her head, a voice like home speaks to her.  She knows he’s kneeling in front of her.  She sees him, but she also sees through him and around him and doesn’t _see_ him at all.  She wills him to come into focus, but it is too dark.  She shivers as tears sting her eyes and drip steadily off her nose.  He tries to wipe them away, but they are faster than he is.  There is a soft hum of his voice but it comes to her as no more than a vibration.  No more than nothing.

He kisses her forehead and the warmth of the action startles her in the chill of the darkness.  She gasps, eyes wide.

She knows he is in front of her, but she can only see darkness.

* * *

 

                                                                                 

* * *

She gets there in 15.

As Daisy hurries towards the building, the rain soaks her clothes but she barely notices it. She slings her bag off her shoulder and sticks her hand inside, rummaging around. After a few moments, just as she’s about to reach the door, she huffs and stamps her foot. Daisy pauses, and then crouches down, placing the bag on the ground and peering inside.

There. 

She pulls out the key and brushes some hair that fell into her face, making a mental note to, next time, put it somewhere other than the bottom of her bag. Granted, when Jemma had given it to her with a smile and a nod, they had been called by Mace just a few minutes later. Daisy could only just throw it in somewhere before she headed out.

It deserves to be somewhere nicer than jumbled with old candy wrappers, tubes of lipstick, and black eyeliner.

Daisy clutches the key in her hand, and runs towards the door.

(The key is to see where you were, and to see where you are. The key was jumbled with all these things that were from when she ran, and the key is something that she runs with, secure in her grasp. The key is to see where you were and to see where you are. But it’s also to see _who_ you were, and who you are now.) 

Daisy doesn’t wait for the elevator but climbs the stairs, reaching the floor where Fitz and Jemma live. She reaches out towards the door, the key gripped tightly, when she suddenly stops.

The last time she was here, she was on the opposite side of this door-- coating it with her blood, and telling Jemma she had nowhere else to go.

She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. She had thought she had nowhere else, that she had no one else, but she just couldn’t see that they were just waiting for her. While she ran and ran and ran, they waited.

She turns the key into the lock, and goes exactly where she needs to be. 

* * *

He has closed the curtains again and Jemma’s not sure if she’s relieved or angry.  There’s no chance for relief now, but at least the possibility can stop taunting her.  Inside her head, she screams.  Again and again and again.  Lips pressed tightly shut, she screams and silently screams until her throat is raw.

He knows. 

She can tell by the way his body is curved around her, perched on that little sliver of bed between her body and the abyss of darkness.  There’s a sound and he stands up and she wants to grab him and demand that he stays. 

(If he goes, even just to the door, just out of her line of sight, she will go away again.  Because he is here now and she knows he is here and they are more intertwined than they’ve ever been before and if he’s here, so is she.) 

But he doesn’t leave.  He just stands and she knows he’s raising his voice.  She knows he’s talking to someone that’s not her.  So she keeps screaming and maybe he senses a change because he reaches down to stroke her cheek but he’s still talking to someone else. 

She wants to close her eyes and go back to sleep.  She wants to scream outside her head and kick and thrash until the world listens to her demands. 

But she’s frozen.  She can’t block out the grayness of the day.  She can’t do anything.

In her mind, above the screaming, she can hear it.  _Stop being so helpless_.  

And so she responds, _I don’t want to be_.

But she feels cold and abandoned and confused and she remembers. 

She hates when she remembers.

That alone is worse than any paralytic agent she could create. 

She wants to breathe, but cannot focus on where she is or what she is.

All she knows is she _is_.

* * *

Jemma looks so… small.

Jemma’s always been small, of course. But it’s seeing her curled up in a ball in the middle of her bed that it strikes Daisy how really small Jemma is. 

(Maybe she never really noticed because Jemma has so much to offer. So much love and goodness that she just gives, and gives, and _gives_. For a person so small, Jemma’s heart is so large.)

“Does this happen a lot?” Daisy whispers to him, her eyes still locked on Jemma.

“When it’s been too cloudy for too long,” Fitz whispers back. “There’s nothing to do but wait.”

Daisy takes one last glance before she turns to Fitz. “Then why don’t you go on in? I’ll stay with her.”

He walks across the room to her and rests his hand on her shoulder.

“I think she needs you today.”

“I think so, too.”

“I’m glad you’re back, Daisy.”

It’s not his words that make her purse her lips and blink rapidly, but his _eyes_ as they meet hers. He’s looking at her with such affection and love that she knows that words could never possibly grasp. They are forgiving.

But there’s also a thousand tragedies and apologies locked in those eyes that she knows words could never possibly reach. They are haunted.

(She wonders what her eyes look like.)

Fitz lifts his hand off her shoulder and shifts on his feet, about to walk away. But before he can, she pulls him into a tight embrace and hopes he understands.   

When Daisy finally pulls away, she squeezes his arm and he smiles. Then he takes one last glance at Jemma before he turns and walks out the door.

Daisy crawls into the bed.

* * *

She hates herself for thinking it, but she's embarrassed.  She can't remember the last time she was embarrassed in front of Daisy.  

Because Daisy always understands and Daisy always knows. 

But now Daisy knows too much and understands too much and it's Jemma who doesn't know and Jemma who doesn't understand.  It's Daisy who hurt so much she ran and Jemma who was so content and so in love that there was nothing to run from.  All she had ever been running to was hers.   

She wonders for too long how many days Daisy spent like this.  Broken.   

There's really no other word to describe it.  Her mouth and her eyes and her ears and her skin had ceased communicating with her brain.  It was, after all, her brain’s fault for turning off.  For making her forget whose world, whose bed, and whose arms she was in.  And now it came back just enough to ask, 

_Who holds Daisy when she breaks?_  

Because it's not fair.  Because Jemma has lost everything only to gain it all back and more.  But Daisy lost for good.  It's weak and it's selfish, she knows, to break so easily.  

_I want to survive like you_ , she wants to say.  Because some days, what's she's doing doesn't feel like she has survived.  She just is.  

Jemma wants to scream _I am here_.  

(And Jemma wants to tell Daisy she shouldn't be)

(It's not that she doesn't want her and it's not that she doesn't love her.  But deserve is a completely different topic.  Daisy deserves to lie in bed all day and be reminded how loved she is.  Jemma can't think of whatever she's done to deserve it.  So she concludes that she doesn't)

She feels the bed depress as Daisy climbs in, slipping under the covers and moving closer and closer to her.  She hears her own name whispered just before Daisy’s fingers just barely touch her forehead, pulling back the hair that had clung to the sweat of her brow.   

(It's a horrible feeling, sweating when you're cold)

For a moment, Jemma allows herself to appreciate it.  To savor having a friend, having a sister so committed to trying to piece her back together when she breaks. Daisy talks to her in the voice of another girl and she tries to listen.  It feels almost cliche when she thinks about it in terms of when they were in the sky, above the rest of the world.  They were such different women then.  And, on some days, they were even girls. 

(It's days like this, moments like this, when Daisy must comfort Jemma and Jemma has nothing to give in return, that she wonders if Daisy fears her friend got left behind, on a different planet in a different universe in a different life) 

(She did--Jemma knows this.  She got left behind.  The happy girl.  The noble agent.  The person who deserved to be counted among the rest.  Who deserved Fitz)

Inside her head, she screams and screams until the tears break through and a quiet whimper breaks through her lips.

* * *

Daisy knows that inside Jemma there’s a storm. There’s a storm outside and a storm inside but Daisy knows it’s a storm all the same.

She can see it by the way her hands grasp the sheets of the bed, but she looks straight ahead at the window, frozen in place by something Daisy cannot see. There’s a storm inside Jemma but somehow she’s only let out a small whine.

It’s as if she’s afraid that if she opens her eyes and lets it out, there’ll be an ocean. There’ll be an ocean and the tides will tear them apart and swallow them whole. And they’ll swim towards the bottom and drown because they think they’re swimming towards the surface.

Daisy shifts in the bed, and reaches for her hand.

(If there’s going to be an ocean, and if they are going to drown, Daisy’s gonna hold that hand hold on tight and make sure it's enough to keep them together)

“Let go, Jemma.”

Jemma whimpers again, and Daisy grips her hand tighter.

“It’s okay. Let it go. I won’t leave.”

Oh, she did try. She tried _so_ hard to leave, to let them go. She was too focused on her hurt and pain that she didn’t see the hurt and pain she made in her wake. She thought that even though she couldn’t save him she could save _them_. But the fact is that she left, and she left Jemma behind.

“There’s no sun.”

Jemma’s voice cracks and wavers, but it’s there. Daisy takes a deep shuddering breath and brushes her hair behind her ear.

“Yeah, weather’s been pretty crappy lately.”

Jemma turns over and faces Daisy, before finally letting her eyes squeeze shut. “I want the sun.”

(It’s days like this, moments like this, when Daisy must comfort Jemma and hold on tight, that she fears her friend feels left behind, while she ran away and ran from everyone and ran from everything)

(She did—Daisy knows this. She left Jemma behind. The happy girl. The noble agent. The person who deserved to be counted among the rest. Who deserved _more_ )

* * *

 “I want the sun,” Jemma says, and her voice shatters.

“I want the sun,” and the syllables come out scrambled and nonsensical and desperate.

It breaks out of her, an active scream amongst the passivity.  Because that's all she is.  Passive.  

She gets found.

She gets brought to the sun.  

She hates the way she wallows in self-pity and hatred and doubt.  

“I have to-” and she's not sure if it's said in her head or out loud, if her words are articulate or a cry Daisy will have to decipher.  She doesn't even know if she even knows the ending of the sentence.  

So she cries, but with her eyes open.  As long as they're open she stays.  As long as they're open the clouds might break and Jemma Simmons might deserve anything.  

In a movement that surprises even herself, she unclenches her hand, releasing her life grip on her pillow, and grabs Daisy's hand where it rests on her arm.  She tries to say everything all at once-

_I'm sorry._  
_I'm scared._  
_I'm selfish.  
_ _Thank you._

-but she knows that a hand is a hand and, until she can breathe again, she will say nothing at all.

She feels hysterical, like a child, and wonders if it's possible to drown in your own tears.  

* * *

Jemma says she wants the sun.

She says she wants the sun, trembling and wide-eyed, gripping Daisy’s hand and trying to say more but she can’t seem to find the words to say. She’s trying to claw her way to the surface but she’s being pulled down deeper and deeper by something Daisy can’t see. 

Daisy shatters.

Without releasing Jemma’s hand, Daisy shifts even closer, pressing her forehead against hers. She squeezes her eyes shut and inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales. She waits until she pieces together what she could possibly ask a small scientist who’s still trying to piece herself back together. She waits until the rhythm of Jemma’s breath is no longer erratic and matches hers, and until she knows that Jemma’s ready to hear what she has to say.

(Daisy already made the mistake of running. She’ll wait, and wait, and wait for as long as she needs to, and as long as Jemma needs her to, too.)

She opens her eyes that have seen too much and meets eyes that have seen too much but still has that warmth and love that only Jemma could have.

“You have to what?”

* * *

 Her breath comes out in sharp gasps.  

_I don't know._  
_I don't know.  
_ _I DON’T KNOW._

Because the answer is nothing and everything.  The simple answer, the obvious one, is that she most manage.  She must learn to live without the sun.   She's done it before.  She's lived without the sun.   

(Not really, though, she knows.  She stayed alive without it, but she didn't live and she didn't want to be alive.   Because in a world without sun and without Fitz and without Daisy and without May and without and without--the list goes on and there's nothing to live for)

“What if,” she tries, her voice hoarse and crackling, “What if I can't make it…”

_Make it come back_ , she wants to say, but her ability to breathe betrays her.  She shakes her head to tell Daisy _I don't end here_.

She lets out a long, shaky breath.   

“Six months,” she says.  “Six months of no sun.   And I couldn't make it come back.  I couldn't make it anything.”   She shuts her eyes, tears streaming down her face and soaking through her pillow.   

“I feel like a child, Daisy,” she says, “but what if I can't make it come back?”

* * *

“Let me ask you something.” Daisy pulls off the covers and steps onto the ground, her back facing Jemma. She gets up from the bed and glances behind her, beckoning with her hand.

“Come on.”

Daisy walks around the bed to the window and pauses, waiting until she hears the creak of the bed and the footsteps and the feel of Jemma gripping her arm.

Daisy opens the curtains, and they don’t speak for a while.

“What do you see?” Daisy finally utters. 

“I see nothing,” Jemma responds, her voice quiet and bare, squeezing Daisy’s arm for a second and then letting go. “It’s just-- gray. Grayness and nothingness and the sun’s not there.” 

“But Jemma,” Daisy whispers. “The sun hasn’t left. It’s still there, hidden by the clouds. It could never leave you, no matter how much it seemed like it.”

She leans into Jemma, lifting her arms around her and shifting her head into the crook of her shoulder. She holds her tight, as if her presence and touch and love could erase all the pain that Jemma carries.

Slowly, Jemma embraces her back, holding her as tight as Daisy is and Daisy _knows_ that she’s trying to do the same.

And they both wait for the sun to break through.


End file.
